Sunday, April 26, 2015

Cortisol

I'm having a harder time than usual keeping awareness stable.

A lot of cortisol flowing through my brain because of an Op-Ed that's been percolating.  Having a hard time even writing this because my mind is flying all over the place.

I remember Rinpoche's tips for dealing with overwhelming emotions.  Going back to basics. Still meditations like open awareness, or still objects.

Or even just take a break.

I'm thinking I may be a little more prone to this because I've let my running practice go of late.  So I'm going to lace up and get out there today.

We are born to run. I do believe that.

Time to download that 21K app and get out there.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Retreat--Tidy 2

It's day 2 of a spring self-directed retreat.  A retreat I decided I must need because my home has descended into a mild state of squalor.

The insight I had on the second day of my last retreat was about the importance of my physical health.  This one I'm meditating specifically on the importance of my environment and the tangled emotional relationship I have with housework.

Housework is tightly wound up in all the Buddha nature blockers. Faint heartedness because just looking at all this mess makes me want to crawl up into a ball. Judgement of others because I'm constantly living in reaction toward the people who I feel are imposing these cleanliness values on me. Seeing the untrue as true because the society I live in believes that your home and the state of your home tells everyone who you are, and I tend to accept this and have a low opinion of myself, no matter how much I am self asserting myself through rebellion. Seeing the true as untrue, because no matter how many insights I have about my precious self, when I look at my squalid home that insight gets flushed down the drain. And finally, self obsession. Without consistent cleaning rituals I am constantly being drawn into this recurring game of self-assessment.

I made a decision a long time ago that I was not simply going to accept my messiness. That I was going to work to develop better habits.  It would be great to find a way that meditation gets carried over  into that decision.

In the last two hours of meditation I found myself resting in timeless and boundless awareness, feeling that liberation from the conceptual.  I am not the sock, the dustbunny, the chip bag on the floor.  I'm not even really my body, so how can I be any of these things.

Cleaning meditation is such a nice, short way to liberate oneself from the obsessions and ruts of daily life. May I find a way to free myself and everyone from suffering, one dish, one folded shirt, one dustpan at a time.




Monday, April 13, 2015

Tidying

I heard someone on Oprah once say that the state of one's home is a reflection of the state of one's soul. Actually she said it was the state of a woman's home reflected her soul, which may have something to do with why I reacted so strongly against it. I'm very housework challenged, so it felt like a judgement and a slap in the face. Would she get away with saying that about a woman's body. So why does it seem okay to judge someone by the state of their home?

Disagreement aside, I did notice that after my two day retreat in October, I did suddenly start to develop a cleaning competence I haven't had for a while. So when I looked around at my chaotic surroundings it seemed a big clue that it was time for another retreat.  I don't want to live in spiritual or physical squalor. I want to care enough about myself to keep to good nurturing rituals. 

It's strange though that I have the discipline to sit on a cushion for five hours, which is what I did today.  But feel so overwhelmed by some clothes thrown on the floor. 

It was a lovely meditation today.  Many moments of timesless awareness and insight into what it would feel like to be free of suffering.  Relatively very few moment of discomfort, anger.  Some sadness, some irritation, some impatience. But I rode them. 

So what is this housework thing about? 

This afternoon I'm committed to an hour of cleaning meditation.  Tonight another hour of formal practice. 

Maybe some insight will come...

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Easter

Life is a precious gift. Really, every day we should be waking up as though we won the lottery, when we consider the tremendous odds of being born at all. And to add to this gift, the fortune to be aware of life's full potential. And to be able to activate that potential.

How is it that I spend so much more time feeling overwhelmed by life's challenges than I am overwhelmed by its plenty? Because my beliefs limit me.

Whatever I know at an abstract level, I am still in the habit of believing in this singular, solid self, this collection of sad and angry memories, this financially and still emotionally struggling self. I still find myself locked in to angry obsessive loops of energy.

But there's an emerging energy in recent months, the same, yet different from that pure energy I've felt in my chi kung practice.  It's a free flowing almost fractal like, snakey, wavey energy that is in my gut. The difference is subtle, but important. It's the ease with which I can now activate it.  I rest my bare attention on it, recognize it as both precious and impermanent and then I just watch it go.

In time it rises up. Up through my heart, my mouth and eventually out the top of my head.

This is the result of my lent decision to sleep earlier, rise earlier, listen only to Tergar material to get to sleep.

This is my Easter gift to myself.